Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Oun:
 
I believe your basic question is whether the Bible is often actually 
referencing Galilee, in various places where the Bible has traditionally been 
viewed as referencing Judah.  If that’s your underlying question, then you 
might 
consider asking George Athas what ancient documentation, other than Ezra’s 
post-exilic II Chronicles 14: 12-13, suggests that the Patriarchs’ GRR is 
not Upper Galilee, but rather is a locale in southwest Canaan.  As opposed to 
that scholarly view, the following equation should be considered:  KRR = GRR 
= GLL = GLYL.  We know that on the mid-15th century BCE Thutmose III list, 
Egyptian K represented west Semitic gimel/G, and that Egyptian R represented 
either west Semitic resh/R or west Semitic lamed/L.  Also, the interior yod 
in GLYL is a post-exilic invention, where an interior yod is a vowel 
indicator.  So KRR [item #80 on the TIII list] = either GRR [the letters we 
see in 
the Patriarchal narratives, transliterated into English as “Gerar”] and/or 
GLL, with GLL in turn simply being an older spelling of GLYL.
 
Note also that in the Bible, GLYL is rarely mentioned at all outside of a 
parallel reference to QD$, a well-known city located in eastern Upper 
Galilee.  Genesis 20: 1 references both GRR and QD$, which suggests that both 
GRR 
and QD$ at Genesis 20: 1 are referring to Upper Galilee.
 
As to logic, note that while in GRR, “Isaac sowed in that land and reaped 
in the same year a hundredfold.”  Genesis 26: 12  That is not presented in 
the text as being a miracle, and absent a divine miracle, that would be 
essentially impossible in the very marginal land of southwest Canaan, while 
making 
perfect sense in Upper Galilee.
 
So if your question is whether Galilee plays a larger role in the Bible 
than Jewish or Christian or university scholars are comfortable with, a good 
place to start would be to ask what ancient documentation university scholars 
can cite to support their unanimous, but in my opinion totally erroneous, 
view that the Patriarchs’ GRR has nothing to do with Galilee, but rather is a 
reference, completely unattested in non-biblical ancient sources as far as I 
can see, to an unappealing locale in southwest Canaan.  The Patriarchal 
narratives have pinpoint historical accuracy, but in my view, one should not 
rely on Ezra’s ultra-southerly reinterpretation of the underlying geography 
of 
the Patriarchal narratives.
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois